GRAVITY Director Cuarón Rumored to Direct FANTASTIC BEASTS

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Chalk this up as strictly a rumor for now, but according to entertainment reporter Nikki Finke, Gravity director Alfonso Cuarón may be in talks to direct J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

In a pair of tweets from last week tied to Warner Bros. dating Fantastic Beasts a November 18th, 2016 release date, Finke claims sources are telling her that the filmmaker is in talks to bring the first in a planned trilogy based on Rowling’s 54-page book to the big screen.

Fantastic Beasts would follow “magizoologist” Newt Scamander, who pens one of the textbooks used by the students at Hogwarts detailing various exotic animals. The script is being written by Rowling herself, who completed a draft earlier this year.

This would be Cuarón’s second stint in the Potter-verse, following his 2004 directing gig on the largely acclaimed (and really, best entry in the series) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. That film allowed the series to go darker than it had previously, pushing the sense of dread in the series to more mature places.

Does this mean that Fantastic Beasts would skew a little older? That would be my guess, although what that could mean tonally for this first entry in a planned trilogy remains to be seen.

Cuarón is just coming off of the desert thriller Forsaken with his Y Tu Mama Tambien star Gael Garcia Bernal, who plays a man attempting to cross the border at the Sonora desert only to find that someone is trying to kill him and his fellow travelers.